Pour l'Amour du Ciel
by butchinthestreets
Summary: High-school cishets-don't-exist remix with some of the magical elements kept in. M for profanity and violence, warnings for transphobia and sexism and misgendering and probably a lot more things to come. No pairings as of yet, multichap.
1. Angel, Succubus, Skeleton

Written 2013 - December - 12.

* * *

There is a room. The room is not empty. The room contains a boy.

It also contains silence. The lack of sound is aggressive, leaning heavily on the space and its contents. There is no movement in the air, no tiny changes in the atmosphere.

The boy is not dead, but the boy is not breathing. He has no heart to beat, no blood, no skin, no flesh.

The boy is not dead.

He shares the room with the quiet.

The emptiness fills his head. He would never have said that the lack of a sound was a sound in and of itself, but somehow, it is. It deafens him, pins him still where he leans against the wall. He has no muscle, no sinew, but theoretically, he could move. In actual practice, there is something stopping him, and that is the stillness.

He does not have ears. The silence roars

rushing

tugging

impermeable

_stops_.

The room has a door. The door is opened. A girl steps in, thin, tanned fingers tugging the room back into its closed-off shape.

The room has two occupants; the girl has displaced the silence.

"Hello," she says after a long moment spent only staring at the boy. "I'm Stephen. You're a skeleton."

"Hello, _Stephen_," the boy says, shifting himself to stand a little higher against the wall so that he looms just a little over the girl. "My name is Skulduggery."

The girl doesn't giggle. It's not really something she does. She snorts a brief little laugh, though, and raises her eyebrows. "Seriously?" she asks in a lyrical accent. "You're a skeleton named Skulduggery?"

"Believe it or not," the boy says, shifting again because the girl is _tall_, "the name came before the transformation."

"Right," says the girl. "_Skulduggery_."

"At least my name suits me," Skulduggery says with a sniff. "_Stephen_ comes from a word for _crown_, and you'll forgive me for saying you don't seem like much of a king."

"The word meant _wreath_ too," Stephen answers mildly, crossing her arms and smiling wide. "And if you know me for a while, you'll soon learn I'm a victor."

"Oh, great," Skulduggery says, giving up on his nonchalant posture to stand up straight and wave his hands in a loose, excitable gesture. "Masculine bravado!"

"I am very brave," Stephen acknowledges with a calm nod.

"Oh, really? Because I had you pinned more for a flighty type."

Stephen closes her eyes and counts to ten. "Don't go there," she says when she's done.

"Oh, I'm _sorry_," Skulduggery says doggedly, "Your opening with 'you're a skeleton' didn't really tip me off as to the fact that talking about our physical peculiarities was going to be off limits."

"Shut up," Stephen says evenly, "shut up, shut up, shut up."

"Or what?" Skulduggery asks, smooth tenor voice inching steadily higher. "Are you going to _make_ me, _angel_?"

The door to the room opens, and then there are three.

"Boys, boys, boys," the newcomer says from the doorway, looking in with icy blue eyes and a thin red smile, "please, don't waste your energy fighting if it's not over me."

"Sorry to upset your delicate sensibilities," Stephen says coolly.

"We were just discussing Stephen's wings," Skulduggery says.

"We actually weren't," Stephen answers.

"We were, actually, but all that's in the past now," Skulduggery says. "Why talk about the winged angel in the room when there's a succubus straight from Hell?"

"Do you want me to hit him for you?" Stephen asks. "Defend your honor, kind of thing? It would be an absolute pleasure, I can assure you."

"I'm quite able to defend my own honor, but thank you, that's very sweet. Your name is Stephen, is that so?" asks the strikingly pale newcomer.

"Yeah. The asshole without skin is apparently named Skulduggery. By chance. Go figure."

"My name is China. It's nice to meet you, Stephen."

"Same to you," Stephen says, returning China's polite nod.

"What, it's not nice to meet _me_?" Skulduggery asks.

"No," China and Stephen answer as one, with a grinning backwards glance at each other a moment after.

"_Girls_," Skulduggery says in an aggrieved undertone. Stephen scowls and China sighs delicately,

"For the record, Skulduggery, I'm not a girl," China says, mezzo-soprano voice even.

"You're in this holding room with the two of us, about to be carted off to a reform school," Skulduggery says, voice bored and distant. "You have to be within a year of sixteen. Sorry if I don't think that qualifies you as a woman."

"I'm not a girl," China repeats, "and I'm not a woman."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Skulduggery says. "Don't tell me you're one of those traps."

"I'm going to ignore that just this once," China says evenly. "But the next time you say something like that, I am going to tear you apart and hide the pieces."

"Oh, so you _are_ one of those, then," Skulduggery says mockingly. "What should I call you, then? He? She? It?"

China moves forward fluidly. Skulduggery tries to scuffle away, but fails. China draws back abruptly a moment after.

"You can have your hand back when we're done with this conversation," China says calmly. "If, and only if, I feel like returning it. I am not a man, or a woman, or a girl, or a boy, or any one of a number of slurs I'm sure you could pull out of thin air if you were feeling, at any point, suicidal. You do not get to call me he, or she, or it. You may use singular _they_ to refer to me, or my name. You will not disrespect me any further, nor make transphobic remarks in my presence."

"Fine," Skulduggery says. "Can I have my hand back now?"

"Apologize first," China says.

"I apologize," Skulduggery says sulkily. "Not sure what for, but-" He pauses at the look on China's face. "I apologize," he repeats after a moment, and China nods.

"That's a start," China says, and returns Skulduggery's hand.


	2. Scars, Softness, A Train

Written 2013 - December - 13.

* * *

It is with reluctance that Stephen looks up to the door as it opens to admit a young person with a face covered with scars. She'd been quite enjoying watching China's treatment of Skulduggery, though she's still a little leery of China in general.

"I feel so much better about not having skin now," Skulduggery says loftily to the newcomer from where he is once more leaning against the wall. "I was beginning to wonder if I oughtn't feel a little upset about that, but at least now I know it could be worse. I could be you."

"Skulduggery, shut up," Stephen says with a brief, glancing glare. "Hi. This is Skulduggery. He constantly begs to be hit."

"Oh, I know him," says the newcomer with a nod and a gracious smile that distorts his cicatricial skin. "You're right, he does. My name is Bespoke."

"Just call him Ghastly," Skulduggery says. "Everyone does."

"Hello, Bespoke," China says, stepping forward to shake his hand. He stands significantly taller than China does, and tilts his neck a little to look at them. "My name is China Sorrows. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Charmed," he says in answer. "I go by _he_ - what are the pronouns you prefer?"

"They," China responds, beaming.

"And you are?" Bespoke asks of Stephen.

"Stephen," she says and shakes his hand quickly. His grip is gentle, hers tight. "Nice to meet you."

"And you, Stephen," Bespoke says with an appraising look. "Have you been stuck here with Skulduggery long?"

"He was in here first," Stephen says with a shrug. "So, yeah."

"I'm right here," Skulduggery sing-songs.

"We're aware," China tells him. With a quick laugh, Ghastly walks to Skulduggery and proffers a hand to be shaken.

"You're not going to remove one of my limbs, are you?" Skulduggery asks dolefully. "Because I'm pretty sure China's got me covered for that."

"Don't be an idiot, Skulduggery, of course I'm not," Ghastly says.

"I'm not an idiot," Skulduggery says, voice whining, but he takes Ghastly's hand and clings onto it. Stephen turns to China.

"We should probably leave them alone, huh?" she asks, one eyebrow raised.

"It's only a rather small room," China says, "but yes, I think you're right, on the whole."

So it is that when the room's door swings open a fifth time, Tanith Low walks in on nervous tiptoes only to be confronted by the sight of two boys cuddling in one corner with the room's other two occupants sitting as far away as possible.

"Well," Tanith says, a little awkwardly. "I'd apologize for the intrusion, but I'm not really sure what else I could have done. Um. Hello?"

The introductions go by at speed, with Ghastly and Skulduggery more engrossed in each other at this stage than anything else, and Tanith herself a bundle of cheerfully nervous energy that expresses itself in her quick, careless gestures and the leaping descant of her voice. She speaks with a crisp, light accent which China comments on and leads her into a conversation over that becomes steadily less stilted. Stephen tries to stay somewhat involved in it at first, but soon finds herself gravitating away, instead to contemplate how many more people the room is expected to hold. It's been uncomfortably close ever since it's needed to hold more than two.

Her question is soon answered: the sixth time the door opens, it is not to admit another youth, but to allow an unsmiling adult to peer in with unexpressive eyes.

"Skulduggery Pleasant," says this individual in an uninflected alto voice, "Stephen Cain, China Sorrows, Ty Bespoke, Tanith Low. Follow me now to be conducted to your place of future residence."

Stephen walks on the (sensible, silent, steadily-paced) heels of this person, anxious to be gone from the confines of the room. The other four trail behind, China and Tanith still engaged in some kind of nonverbal communication that darts between their eyes and the tilting of their shoulders, and Skulduggery and Ghastly holding hands like it's some kind of a talisman. Stephen glances back at how far they're trailing, and the thought worries her, makes her quicken her own step. She's no attachment to the Administrator they are all following, but she's loathe to get lost.

Looking at them also make Stephen feel desperately lonely, somehow, even more so than the sterile stone surfaces of the Administration building make her feel in the first place. It feels a little like a portent of what her next years spent being educated might be like, and the thought isn't a pleasant one, is instead something that sinks into her ankles and her wrists and the heavy beating of her heart. Still, she supposes, there's not much she can do about it, and on she walks, tapping her fingers against the sides of her legs and trying to ignore the anxiety afforded to her by the way the others seem to loiter.

They are led to a small bubble of a shuttle-compartment of a long, snaking train. The platforms are relatively open, and Stephen can see hundreds of other children being admitted to the instrument of transport. Despite this, the area is silent but for quiet footfall and the droning voices of the Administrators.

The group's Administrator waits for all the children to walk close enough to hear words delivered in an undertone, and then speaks. "You will remain in this grouping until you have reached your destination," the Administrator says. "If one of you were to go missing, the rest would be held responsible. Do you understand?"

There is an assortment of nods and murmurs of assent to that, so the Administrator gestures for them to enter the compartment. There are five seats, two paired and the last on its own at the back, and Stephen goes for the isolate automatically. Instead of staring at the others, she looks up to the gray of the ceiling as they begin their journey to the next stage of their lives.


End file.
